More music videos emerge

Filming “Hey Jude” at Twickenham Film Studios

In the wake of the officially released promo video collection “Beatles 1” and “Beatles 1+”, more videos have emerged on the internet. As you know, only one of the two “Revolution” music videos was included on the official release, the same goes for “Lady Madonna”, and for “Hey Jude”, one real video was accompanied by another, hybrid version which edited together two of the other “Hey Jude” performances.

On the video platform Dailymotion (similar to YouTube, but another company), both the “Lady Madonna” videos, both the “Revolution” videos as well as all three “Hey Jude” performances have been uploaded lately by by Revolver Records & Video, sans the familiar watermarks associated with this uploader.

The source of the videos is said to be a collection of Beatles promo films remastered by Ron Furmanek for Apple back in the early nineties. The quality is not as good as the videos on the official release, but much better than versions of these films which have circulated earlier. Also, “By George! It’s The David Frost Theme” is present in three variations as an intro to the “Hey Jude” videos. For “By George! It’s The David Frost Theme”, John C Winn have made this list of versions now available to us:

– Takes 1 and 2

(listed erroneously as takes 2 and 3 in Winn’s book That Magic Feeling)

First heard in the Japanese Anthology broadcast, and then on the home video version. Ends with applause from the crowd and a reprise of the theme

– Take 3

(listed erroneously as take 1 in That Magic Feeling)

Used on Frost on Sunday, and circulating as a kinescope forever – with a tiny bit extra at the end (Frost says “Try one more, while we’re running…”) compared to the video source. Video source released on “Beatles 1” DVD. Ends with “It’s Now Or Never”

– Take 4 (FS)

Shared by Revolver TV on New Year’s Eve, John counts-in the theme, but Frost halts him and Paul asks the orchestra to stand.

– Take 5

First released on the “Beatles 1+” DVD, the orchestra is now standing and joining in

Ends with “You Are My Sunshine”.

The David Frost themes were all performed one after the other and not before each take like it appears in the released “Hey Jude” video(s). Winn also noticed that all sorts of audio magic has been applied to the official releases. For instance, on one of the “Hey Jude” takes, Giles Martin has mixed in the tambourine from the record earlier than it appeared in the actual promo. There was something off about the handclaps, too. And on “Revolution” (take 1) from “Anthology”, they mixed in John’s lead vocal from the record in places where it shouldn’t be, so it’s double-tracked. So the only versions you can really trust to be untampered with are from Revolver TV.

Variation 3 of the “Hey Jude” videos is presented in full for the first time. The first two thirds of this performance of the song is new to the video collector community, only bits of the final third has been used as edit pieces in the Smothers Brothers version, in “Anthology” and “Beatles 1+”. Before filming “Hey Jude”, The Beatles performed a jam session to warm up the audience. In the “Let It Be” film, “Lucille”, “Long Tall Sally” and “Jenny Jenny” are mentioned to have been played at that jam session, although the jam was not filmed by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s crew.

“Lady Madonna” is the two different 1968 edits, and not the “Anthology” version, which flew in bits and pieces unrelated to the main video.

These videos come as an addition to the fan made “18+” collection of Beatles music videos we posted about earlier, and incidentally that collection has now been expanded to a “21+” collection.